Frozen
by kate tidly
Summary: How will our favourite couple deal with a case miles from home? BB Chapter 3 reposted
1. Chapter 1

**This just kind of came to me when I was trying to get to sleep. Plus 'Moving On' doesn't seem to be going anywhere. This story should hopefully have a case and some BB interaction. This chapter is really just setting the scene. I'll get into the gory details of the case later! Hope you enjoy, luv Kate :D**

Bones shivered and curled herself into an even tighter ball. _I hate this case_, she thought, _I'm freezing, stuck in an absolute hole of a town, and it's dark all the time_. Frankly Bones just couldn't believe that she had given into Booth, although he hadn't really given her that many options. She recalled the events of yesterday afternoon.

Booth had sauntered casually into her office like he always did, causing her to stop typing and look up.

"New case?" she queried.

"Yup," he replied, "c'mon Bones lets go."

She jumped up, grabbing her field kit and shedding her lab coat quickly; a well practised routine. They headed for the exit with Booth's had firmly, almost proprietarily, resting in the small of her back. They passed Angela who noted the field kit and deduced they must have a new case. _About time_ she thought, _those two needed some more time together_.

They climbed into Booth's SUV and headed off.

"Do you have a case file for me to look at?" Brennan asked, not one for small talk.

"No, we don't yet."

Bones looked slightly affronted. That was a little odd, but she just sat back and let the drive pass by.

A little later she couldn't help but notice that they were heading towards the same area her apartment was in. Brennan's suspicions were further heightened when Booth pulled to a stop right outside her apartment.

Turning to Booth, she said angrily, "Is this some kind of sick joke?"

Booth sighed heavily and ran his hands through his hair. "No Bones this is not a joke. You need to go inside and pack the warmest clothes you have because this case is in…Alaska."

As Bones rolled over again in an effort to get warm, she recalled her incredulity.

When Bones realised Booth was deadly serious she just got out of the car, slamming the door. Brennan took the steps up to the door of her apartment two at a time and then disappeared from view. Booth waited a minute and then followed, not looking forward to the argument that awaited him behind her closed apartment door.

He knocked on the aforementioned door, leaning against the door frame as he waited for Brennan to open it. After a while he realised she wasn't coming and tried the door handle. To his surprise, it was open. Finding Bones in her bedroom throwing a pile of long johns into a suitcase, he cleared his throat.

"Yes, Agent Booth, what do you want?" she asked icily.

"Well, Dr Brennan, I came to see how you were going with your packing," he shot back.

"It's going divingly. I don't need your input for this."

Booth chuckled. "Actually Bones, I believe the word you wanted was 'swimmingly'." She just shot him an evil look and returned to her suitcase.

He tried to explain. "Look Bones I'm sorry okay, but I thought that if I told you where we were going then you would refuse to come!"

She turned around to him, cheeks flaming, angry now. "You're implying that I wouldn't do my job properly?"

Booth just sighed. She really was infuriating sometimes. He left the apartment and went to sit in his car.

The flight had been long and boring. Both had tried to sleep as they knew they wouldn't get another chance until they reached their destination. The silence between them was gaping, neither willing to make the first move towards reconciliation after their earlier fight. After the flight they had driven for another four hours to their destination – a sleepy coastal town called Oval Harbour.

Bones scoffed silently. To call it a town was really stretching it. This…place…had a general store, a sheriff's office and a pub/hotel. Normally she would have been interested in the logistics of living such an isolated life from an anthropological point of view, but today, she had just been too tired. After travelling for almost a day, she was exhausted.

The drive had been relatively tense too. The conditions were icy, and Booth had to concentrate intently on the road. Both felt a little disquieted about the almost perpetual darkness. Since it was January, it was the coldest and darkest time of the year.

They enquired at the hotel about rooms. Surprisingly there was only one room available – a double. That was why Bones was lying in bed next to another sleeping lump called Booth. There was no sofa and both were so tired that they decided to share the bed; sleep being their only priority.

She had called Angela to let her know where she was. Ange, of course, had been excited to know that Brennan was to be sharing a bed with Booth.

"Sweetie, that's great" Angela squealed. "You can't tell me that you're unhappy about sleeping beside that piece of arse!"

"Uh, I can't say I am," Brennan replied.

"C'mon Bren, I've seen the looks you give each other," Angela responded.

Bones had blushed lightly then, and quickly got off the phone before Booth realised they were talking about him.

But Brennan couldn't sleep – she was too cold. Grinding her teeth, Brennan rolled over to the logical solution to her problem. She cuddled up to Booth, thinking him to be asleep. The heat of his body instantly began to permeate her skin and she sighed, knowing sleep wasn't far away. However Booth shifted beside Brennan and wrapped his arm around her, making them both more comfortable.

"I wondered how long it would be until you gave into my charms," he said wryly.

Bones just slapped him lightly on the chest before closing her eyes and relaxing into sleep. Her last coherent thought was that he had a nice chest.


	2. Chapter 2

**Hey hey people. Sorry for such a long delay but I started this story right in the middle of my exams coz I was so excited about it, and I haven't had time to update it since because I had a pile of study to do. Exams are finished and I'm on holidays so hopefully I'll be able to update a whole lot more often from now on. Hope you enjoy, and please review your reviews are such good motivation for me to update (lol they make me feel guilty for neglecting you guys!). Have a great day, luv kate **

Bones woke up feeling contented. Strangely contented considering that fact that she had was in Alaska, having been dragged here by Booth. _Booth_… she realised then that she was cradled in his arms, head on his chest. She wriggled away automatically. As Bones did so she remembered why she had curled up to him in the first place. It was freezing! Looking at the clock, she saw it was only 6.30am. The shower could wait. Bones curled back up against Booth and promptly went back to sleep.

An hour later, the pair woke with a start. Booth absentmindedly kissed Brennan's head, as he rasped out a good morning. She jumped, skittish from the intimate yet natural feel of the contact. Brennan replied to his greeting, but not until she was safely out of bed and heading for the shower.

By 9am they were heading outside to brave the cold. Brennan shivered. _Cold didn't cover it_ she thought. They huddled close together as they scurried down the road towards the sheriff's headquarters. They entered, and removed their outerwear, then headed over to the receptionist.

"Good morning. I'm Special Agent Seeley Booth, and this is my partner Temperance Brennan. We're here to see Sheriff Halcort."

The receptionist directed them towards an open office door where they found the sheriff on the phone. He motioned for them to take a seat and wound up his call.

"Well folks, what can I do for you?" he asked.

Booth let Bones take the lead. "We're from the FBI, and we're here about the remains you found."

"Wow, you people sure are efficient; I wasn't expecting anyone for the next couple of days."

Bones rolled her eyes at Booth, willing him to hurry the guy up so they could get back to DC.

"Do you mind if we take a look at them, and your case file regarding them?" Booth asked.

"No problem. They're downstairs – we have a makeshift morgue down there. Don't get many murders round here so we don't have a need for anything fancy."

Booth and Brennan headed in the direction he indicated. They found the remains resting on a gurney, and Bones had just snapped on a pair of gloves when the sheriff came into the room, bringing the case file with him.

"Here you go folks. If that's all you require, I'll be leaving you to get on with your jobs."

With that he exited the room, closing the heavy metal door behind him. It banged ominously, and Bones shivered involuntarily. Booth caught her shiver.

"Cold Bones?" he asked her with a smirk.

Bones grinned. Booth could always make her feel better. "You wish" she shot back as she returned to the job at hand.

Booth sighed. He rather did wish she was cold…but enough of those thoughts. He returned his mind to the job and settled down to look over the case file.

After a while, Booth came over to show the file to Bones.

"Look at this," he said angrily. "This file is an absolute waste of time. There are no photos of the scene; he hasn't done any investigation as to the identity of the remains..."

"If you think that's bad, then look at the way they've handled the bones. It's clear that whoever brought them in exerted no care in the way that the excavation was carried out. You can clearly see that the damage to the remains occurred at two different occasions."

She stopped, seeing that he really was upset about the lack of care that had been taken in the case so far. Snapping off the gloves, she tossed them in a nearby trash can and wrapped her arms around him.

"Booth, it's okay." She looked him in the eyes. "We will find out what happened to this person."

She rested her head on his chest (which confirmed her earlier suspicions that he did have a nice chest), while he rested his chin on her head. After a moment they drew away from each other. Bones just smiled slightly and returned to the gurney to continue her examination.

"The victim is female, aged between 20 and 25. Caucasian. The remains appear to date from between one and a half to two years ago. No flesh remaining on the bones. Umm…that's all I can do here, but Angela can do a facial reconstruction and get us an id. I'll get Hodgins to check out the microbial life that should be present in the damage caused when this guy was brought in. That should give us an idea of the time period between time of death and time of discovery."

Booth listened to her analysis patiently. "Any sign of foul play?"

"Huh?"

Booth laughed. "Sometimes I don't know why I even bother to try." When she glared at him, Booth modified his previous question. "Any evidence that doesn't indicate death from natural causes?"

Bones smiled. That was better. "There is some cranial damage that could suggest that our guy was hit with an object, and some indentations on the bones that correlated with marks from animal teeth."

Booth pondered that. "Hmm…our guy could have been murdered and left for the polar bears."

He smirked as Bones rolled her eyes. "Trust you to come up with the most unrealistic scenario."

"Don't you know there are polar bears in Alaska Dr Brennan?"

She punched him and walked towards the door. "We really need to give that sheriff a roasting about his procedures."

Booth reached the door, and was met by a look of panicked surprise on the face of his partner.

"The door won't move."


	3. Chapter 3

**I reposted this chapter, as I wasn't really happy with how the case was panning out. Grr…it's still not really working as the intrigue isn't really there, but oh well…hopefully it's better than the first effort. As always, hope you enjoy it, and please review! Have an awesome day kate**

**Disclaimer: I so do not own Bones. **

"Are you serious, Bones? That son of bitch has locked us in here?" said Booth angrily.

"It is a little out of the ordinary," Bones commented.

He pounded ineffectually on the door. The heavy steel absorbed all the sound. "I cannot believe that he would do this."

Booth's anger helped Brennan's anxiety to dissolve and she went over to him in an attempt to calm him down. Placing a hand on his shoulder, she spoke softly to him. "Why don't we just phone him?"

Booth exhaled; she was right. There was no point in getting all wound. He pulled out his cellphone, and dialled 911. Pacing, Booth waited for the call to connect.

"Come on," he growled. After waiting for almost 30 seconds, Booth ended the call and examined the phone. "I don't believe it. No signal! This is fucking unbelievable."

Bones pulled out her phone, and examined the screen. She shrugged her shoulders when she realised that she had the same result.

"He's going to have to realise that we're still down here at some point. We may as well do something to pass the time." Bones said.

Her comment caused Booth to smirk, a smirk that Bones caught. She punched him in the arm – hard.

"That hurt, Bones," he pouted.

"Well, you shouldn't have inappropriate facial expressions then," she replied loftily.

Crossing the room, she sat on the room's sole seat. That caused another sulky expression to cross Booth's face.

"Where am I gonna sit?" he asked, a little petulantly.

Bones looked bored. "That's not really my problem, Booth."

"I could sit on the seat and you could sit on my knee," he suggested.

That caused Bones to blush. "Booth, what the hell is wrong with you?" she asked, hiding her discomfort and confusion with annoyance.

Wanting a distraction she said, "Can I have a look at the case file?"

Her question caused Booth's expression to darken, and he frisbeed it across the room to her. "There really isn't any point." He stalked off to the other corner of the room where he sat down on the floor, knees drawn up, head resting on them.

Bones sighed. At least with Booth in the corner, she could try and concentrate on the file. Opening it, she wondered about the way he had spoken to her before. She could understand him being pissed off, as she was too, but the flirtatious comments were going a little too far. Bones rolled her head on her neck, regaining concentration on what was at hand. She could think about Booth later.

Booth watched Bones as she was drawn into her work. It was something that he admired about her – the fact that wherever, whenever, she was able to focus on the job they had to do. He ran his fingers through his hair. Man, he had been an arse before. Inappropriate remarks were not the way to go around Bones.

20 minutes later, after an extensive perusal of the file, Bones interrupted Booth's thoughts.

"Booth," she called out.

His head snapped up. "Yip, what is it?"

Frowning she walked over and crouched down beside him. "Look at this." She pointed to a date on the file. "It says here that these remains were found almost 5 months ago."

"Unbelievable," Booth said as he rolled his eyes. "This guy just gets more and more annoying." He looked thoughtful. "I wonder if that's why we got sent up here. Normally the remains would have been shipped to the Jeffersonian for examination. Maybe they felt FBI interference was needed to tidy up this guy's procedures. Because it really isn't normal for Cullen to send me to the end of the world without an explanation."

Bones spoke again. "The report from the scene is incomplete. You need to get a statement off the sheriff so we have a fuller account of what actually happened. All we know so far is that the remains were found by a group of people walking up Tasman Glacier, and that they were probably uncovered by the summer melt."

Feeling cramped in her uncomfortable crouch, Bones shifted slightly. However, her legs had pins and needles from a lack of blood flow and when she tried to move them; they wouldn't cooperate, tipping Tempe over into Booth's lap. Trying to extricate herself hurriedly, Bones blushed furiously. It didn't help when Booth wrapped a pair of arms around her waist and lifted her effortlessly off him.

Grinning over at Bones, as she sat next to him, rubbing her legs, Booth said, "I knew I could get you to sit on me somehow!"

Brennan frowned at him, and then gave in and poked her tongue out at him. She got up and snapped a fresh pair of gloves on.

"I'm going to take some photos of these, and take samples for Jack to analyse, considering it looks like we may be here for longer than I had anticipated. You'll just have to occupy yourself."

Booth nodded. "Fine."

Two hours later, Bones was degloving herself. She sighed.

"Okay, I'm getting kind of pissed off now. I really want to get out here."

Surprisingly, with her words, the door opened, revealing the ruddy face of the sheriff.

"What are you folks still doing down here? I thought you would have left hours ago."

Booth jumped to his feet. "Well, we would have been had we been able to get of here. You locked us in," he said aggressively.

The sheriff looked surprised. "Oh, I'm sorry. I must have forgotten to deactivate the automatic lock. We have it for security purposes."

Booth looked unimpressed by his lame story. However, he could feel Brennan's eyes drilling into his back, willing him to let it go. Booth sighed, and the pair followed the sheriff back upstairs.

Booth and Brennan headed over to the pub to get themselves some lunch, and to unwind a little after their rather stressful morning. An hour later, they were back over at the sheriff's office, interviewing him. As usual, Booth had warned Bones to stay out of it, although he had allowed her into the interview room.

"Right, Sheriff," Booth began. "We just want you to give us a full run down of everything that has happened in this case so far."

Sheriff Halcort looked shocked. "We got that skeleton near five months back!"

Booth wasn't going to let him get away with that after this mornings effort. "You can start from there then."

"Well, about five months ago, a group of five locals went walking on Tasman Glacier. Their names are in the file."

Booth looked down at the papers scattered across the table and found the people he was referring to – Dick and Lizzy Mitchell, Michael Best, Kelly O'Connell, James Scott – all locals as the sheriff had said.

"They'd been walking for around 2 hours when they came across the remains scattered across the ice. Some of bones were still partly embedded in the ice."

Booth interrupted. "Did anyone take any pictures of the bones?"

Halcort thought for a moment. "Umm…I think that Dick Mitchell, the guy who owns the store down the road, took a few."

"Why didn't you track them down and put them in the file, then?"

Sheriff Halcort shrugged. "I didn't really see the need. This isn't the first time we've found bones round here. Nothing has ever got solved in the previous cases."

Seeing Booth was seriously pissed now, Bones took over.

"How many other unidentified sets of remains have been found?"

Halcort looked off into space. "I think there've been four before this lot, all found during the summer over the last five years. We're pretty under-resourced here, so in the past I've just interviewed those who found them."

"What happened to those remains?" Bones asked.

"I sent them all over to Anchorage to see if their forensic people could find out anything else about them. As far as I know, they should still have them," Sheriff Halcort replied.

Booth and Brennan exchanged a look.

"Could you continue with your account of your investigation please, Sheriff?" Booth said.

"There's not really that much else to tell. Dick and his mates walked back down here and contacted me and the next day we took a chopper in and removed the bones. The local doctor had a look though he couldn't tell us anything, and I got statements from the five who saw found them. We don't have any missing people round here, so I contacted the FBI a while ago - thought it was a little weird that we had found one skeleton a year for the past five."

Booth had calmed down by now. "Could you give us a list of everyone that has had contact with the remains and hand over the files relating to the other remains? This is now a federal investigation. You are off this case, sheriff."

Armed with the files from the previous cases, and bundled up against the cold, Booth and Bones headed back to their accommodation. Although it was only 3pm, it was dark. Neither was in the mood to head off into the dark and interview anyone. Up in their room, the pair spread out the files on the bed.

"At least we know why the FBI sent us up here now," Bones said.

"I'm going to look through these files and see if I can find any links, although they're all probably as bad as the other one was."

Bones nodded. "I need to send these photos back to Angela, so she can start working on finding us a face. Zach can hopefully tell us the implement that caused our John Doe's head injury. I'll also get those remains from Anchorage sent down to the Jeffersonian."

They broke only for a quick dinner, so by 10pm, Booth and Brennan had a much clearer picture of what had happened. Bones flopped back onto the bed, stretching her legs

"So let's go over what we have so far. There have been five sets of remains found, one each year during August for the past five years. We know that they were all male but that's it. No people are common to the groups who have found them and they've all been found in different locations."

Booth slumped down beside her, rubbing his eyes with his hands. "That sounds about right." He rolled over to look at Bones whose eyes were closed. He poked her gently in her stomach. "C'mon Bones lets go to bed."

"Mmm, sounds good," she replied. "I'm still kinda jetlagged from the flight here."

Bones picked up her pj's from under her pillow and headed to the bathroom to get changed. Emerging from the bathroom, she slipped into bed, leaving the light on as she waited for her partner to return from brushing his teeth. Shivering slightly, Bones remembered her last effort at sleeping in this bed. Judging by the temperature, it looked like she was going to endure another sleepless night. Shutting her eyes, she pulled the blankets tightly around her.

Moments later, Bones felt the mattress sink as Booth got in beside her. He chuckled.

"Why does it not surprise me that you're a blanket hog, Bones?"

Brennan rolled over to face him. "I'm freezing!"

"I can fix that." With that, Booth reached out and pulled her against his body. "Is that better?"

Bones smiled as she sleepily nodded. She could feel the sear of his body heat against her back and all the way down her thighs. This was turning into a nightly thing – although at the moment she wasn't complaining.

As if he could read her thoughts, Booth said, "Don't go getting any ideas now." Then in a complete contradiction to his statement, he kissed her hair and whispered goodnight. The partners fell asleep locked together by Booth's embrace.


End file.
